Vox landed in Parliament three years ago, and won 11 seats. Ignacio Garriga (Sant Cugat, 1987), who was clear that he wanted to repeat as a candidate, puts forward a harsh speech against illegal immigration, which he links to crime, and proposes to open the “post-separatist” stage in Catalonia.
He repeats as a candidate in these elections, he has left the position of spokesperson for Vox. What do you aspire to?
I aspire to lead the post-separatist Catalonia that many Catalans long for. This legislative term we have managed to open debates that until now had no place in Parliament. It has been one of the great successes.
Approach this election with new premises?
It is essential to address the immigration-related security debate, to end the political industry, the waste of money, even embezzled, of separatism and socialism. Recover political freedom to be able to dissent from the single thought. It is not a choice between Illa, Aragonès or Garriga, it is a choice between continuing with the separatist Catalonia or building the post-separatist one.
But the candidate of the Socialist Party, Salvador Illa, leads the polls.
Illa is not an alternative, it is another separatist. It has been one of the great political scams, he denied pardons, he denied amnesties, and I am sure that he signed with Pedro Sánchez and Aragonès a referendum on independence. Vox offers a project to the 8 million Catalans that no one asks about what did you vote for
Does it also address pro-independence voters?
I am addressing all Catalans. We must kick the board once and for all and stop having politicians who have instrumentalized Catalonia for their ideological ends. The Catalans do not want to see how last year 12,000 people died waiting for help in the dependency, or that there is an average of 100 days to be cared for. They want to enjoy what this land was.
He says Vox has opened the debate about illegal immigration. So have Aliança Catalana and, on another record, Junts.
The immigration debate was censored in Parliament. Illegal immigration has brought increasing insecurity to Catalonia, and it requires urgent measures, as it is changing the reality of our neighborhoods and our way of life. We want to put an end to the call effect, shield security on the streets. It is possible to reclaim those neighborhoods that had been safe and have now become places of rapes, stabbings and shootings.
Shielding the call effect, how do you curb people’s desire to seek a better life?
The knock-on effect in Catalonia is much higher because the Generalitat allocates more than 50% of sheltered housing to people who have just arrived, as well as part of the guaranteed income. It is necessary to flatly refuse to participate in this distribution of illegal immigrants in which Sánchez has plunged Spain. Starring immigration blockades at the borders and mass deportations. We want Catalonia to remain Catalonia, and not become Algeria or Morocco. We want young people to be able to go out safely, not to be worried about being stabbed or raped by their girlfriends.
Alejandro Fernández, PP candidate, can he lose votes?
Vox has just added to its candidacy a young leader of the resistance, the former president of S’ha Acabat. It is a sign that this new generation has seen in our alternative the hope for a prosperous Catalonia.
Faced with an eventual victory without a majority of the PSC, are you considering facilitating their investiture?
Is Illa prepared to guarantee schooling in Spanish for Catalans? To put an end to illegal immigration?, to the growing insecurity?, to the political industry that he has built? Are you committed to national unity and breaking pacts with separatism? No. Thus Vox could not support Illa.
Would it give way, then, to an independentist government?
Nowhere is it written that we have to live under a socialist or separatist government.
The data indicate that young women are more left-wing. Does Vox’s denial of sexist violence distance it from the female electorate?
Vox is committed to fighting the scourge of violence against women. I deny those stigmas that young men are right-wing and women are left-wing. What do the Catalans prefer, governments that have allocated millions to ministries of feminism that have served no purpose? Parties that have let loose predators and rapists with their laws of only yes is yes? The women of Catalonia would be safer if Vox governed.
He has not mentioned Carles Puigdemont so far.
Puigdemont is an anomaly this 12-M, the result of a betrayal by Pedro Sánchez to amnesty some criminals.
